Swim Herschel Swim, live at Center Stage, Provo, Utah, 1991-2(?). This photo used without permission from Rich Hillquist’s personal collection.
This song was written in real time on a stage during a show where we needed to calm down the crowd. We were playing at a deli in Provo and they had moved out tables to make room for a dance floor and a tiny tiny stage.
It got out of control quickly, the crowd damaging the property (we were thereafter banned from playing there) and we needed something slower to calm them down.
Rick, the guitarist who had switched to bass so we could play “Clueless“, started playing along with Rich on drums and began calling out chord changes. Rod started picking out a horn line away from the mic and once he had something, started playing his trombone. I think we probably jammed on this song that first time for about 10 minutes. Rod wrote lyrics onstage and created the melody that didn’t change that much when we finally took this into the studio to record.
A few months before we did the studio sessions, we added Sam on tenor sax and of the early horn lines, the work they did on this remains one of my favorite lines we ever did. I can’t recall who suggested the sax/trombone harmony, but whoever did (Rod? Sam? Merkley? Rick?), it’s not bad.
Warning: white boys playing reggae. Listen at your own risk:
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